| dc.description.abstract | Our thesis focuses on the strategy phenomenon of accelerator programs and
how they emerged to meet global demand for increased innovation and value
creation. Our thesis explores the role accelerator programs play in catalyzing
innovation in the energy sector. We seek to understand which network factors
are vital in influencing the accelerator program network and subsequently
enhancing innovation. Innovation studies continue to be central in solving
humanity's many challenges. With an aim to do network development research,
we base our analysis on the theoretical perspectives of Network Theory and the
Ecological view. We perform a comprehensive literature review to enhance our
understanding of the phenomenon and verify our research question through
gap-spotting, then derive hypotheses and shape our descriptive quantitative
research design. The data we use is a novel hand-built dataset utilizing
secondary data on three distinct energy accelerator programs retrieved from the
public database Pitchbook. The completed data set was analyzed through an
association study and triangulation. We uncovered systematic relationships in
our data, and our findings confirmed most of our hypotheses. Comparing our
findings to the existing literature aided us in discovering similarities and gaps.
Notably, we found that network factors derived from characteristics within the
network, such as participant group features, hold a great influence on the
accelerator program performance. Whereas startups and investors have been
found to geographical cluster, our study finds that the use of accelerator
programs increases startup-investor distance. We suggest implications for
research and practice. Based on our limitations, we propose improvements to
research design and areas worthy of future research. We conclude that our
study has added value to the strategy field. Lastly, our findings are used to offer
recommendations to energy accelerator programs. | en_US |
